The Center for Renaissance Studies consortium graduate seminars permit instructors to direct advanced seminars in their areas of specialization while drawing from a larger pool of participants than would be available on a single campus. They also provide firsthand introduction to the Newberry's holdings of manuscripts and early editions in its areas of special strength. Graduate seminars are conducted as symposia for scholars with common interests and goals, rather than as formal courses, and participants are encouraged to develop their own research interests within the limits, broadly interpreted, of the general topic designated by the seminar leader.
To register, complete this enrollment form and e-mail it to renaissance [at] newberry.org, or you may print the form and mail it to Center for Renaissance Studies, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610. Students who wish to take a seminar for credut must make arrangements with their home institutions. Faculty auditing is also encouraged.
Graduate students from consortium institutions receive precedence for enrollment, and the Newberry waives the course fee. Space permitting, students from non-consortium institutions may also enroll in consortium graduate seminars; they pay a fee (contact the Center for current fee information). Travel funds may be available for graduate students and faculty at consortium schools to participate in these seminars.
2:00–5:00 p.m. Fridays, September 25 – December 11, 2009
Barbara Rosenwein, Loyola University Chicago
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Course Description
Like all things human, emotions have a history, but it has not often been traced. Students first will be introduced to current psychological theories and definitions. They will then explore old and new narratives of emotions’ history. Participants will gather their own dossiers of sources to do independent research in various areas of the history of emotions. These projects will be presented orally and written up as final seminar papers.
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William D. Paden, Northwestern University
2:00–5:00 p.m., Thursdays, September 24 – December 10, 2009
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Course Description
This course will introduce students to the troubadours, poets of the South of France in the Middle Ages, and the Occitan language in which they wrote. Students will focus on learning to read the texts in the original language and on understanding the phenomenon of love, often called "courtly," that was the troubadours' greatest subject. They will study the language in Paden, An Introduction to Old Occitan, and learn to translate troubadour poetry in that book; read a book of English translations, Paden and Paden, Troubadour Poems from the South of France; and refer to selected essays in two recent collaborative histories, Gaunt and Kay, The Troubadours: An Introduction, and Akehurst and Davis, A Handbook of the Troubadours. Students will consider the performance of troubadour poetry in song as well as historical issues including the court, gender relations, and desire.
2:00–5:00 p.m. Thursdays, January 7 - March 11, 2010
James Murray and James Palmitessa, Western Michigan University
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Course Description
Burgundian and Habsburg princes ruled over multilingual, multiethnic populations in which cities formed a key to political control and state formation. This course will explore a central dynamic in early modern European history—the interaction of state-building and urban particularism—across the far-flung territories ruled by the Burgundian and Habsburg dynasties from the fifteenth through the mid-seventeenth century. Through an approach both thematic and chronological, this seminar argues for a vision of a dynastic, particularistic Europe, freed of the nationalist traditions of so much nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography.
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2:00–5:00 p.m. Thursdays, January 7 – March 11, 2010
Professor Jana Schulman, Western Michigan University
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Law and literature both embody narratives that reveal much about the community that produces them. This seminar will explore legal issues such as feud, marriage, the status of women, and theft. We will read in the original and translate Anglo-Saxon legal texts that discuss these issues and then see how literary texts incorporate legal elements to create tension and drive the narrative. Some primary texts include laws issued by Æthelberht, Alfred, Edmund, and Canute, as well as selections from Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "Juliana," and "Maxims I." Much has been written on feud in early Germanic societies, less perhaps on women and law, but the secondary sources assigned on these and other issues will help clarify the abbreviated language of the legal texts as well as provide background and fuel for discussion.
Prerequisite: Completion of or concurrent enrollment in a language course in Old English.